This post was co-authored by PPS Transportation Associate David M. Nelson and Transportation Intern David Leyzerovsky. Bike share stations are ideal triangulators. They’re natural conversation-starters, attract a stream of diverse users at all times of day & night, and act as casual landmarks that concentrate activity. Presented with this entirely new element of public infrastructure, [...]Read More »

In our new Leadership Spotlight series, we’ll be chatting with members of the Placemaking Leadership Council about what they’re working on, and what they’re learning from their experiences on the ground in communities in dozens of countries around the world. Marisa Novara is the Program Director for the Metropolitan Planning Council’s Placemaking Chicago initiative, which [...]Read More »

Today, the smokestacks and steel mills that made the great city of Pittsburgh famous are mostly long gone. The “City of Champions,” as it is called, is now considered one of the most livable in the world, and many of the qualities that make it so also happen to make it a great city for [...]Read More »

Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) and the Placemaking movement make great bedfellows. That’s what PPS believes, and apparently over 800 practitioners and policymakers agree. Eight hundred was the number of individuals who registered for the booked-solid Streets as Places webinars presented a few weeks ago by Gary Toth, Senior Director of Transportation Initiatives, and Kate Rube, [...]Read More »

Dear Placemakers; Almost four decades ago, we created the Project for Public Spaces to expand the work of the great urbanologist and observer of public spaces, Holly Whyte. The way that public spaces were being conceived and designed then was disconnected from the reality of how people used them, yet there was surprisingly little resistance. [...]Read More »

Thanks to Clarence at Streetfilms for the heads up on this: the impassioned presentation by transportation reform leader Mark Gorton during this fall’s Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place conference in Long Beach is now available in full online. If you weren’t able to make it to the conference (or if you want to relive the [...]Read More »

On the eve of Halloween, I ventured across the East River to cycle through the eerily dark and silent streets of lower Manhattan. With Sandy’s storm surge freshly receded and my sister a refugee on my futon in Bed Stuy, we hopped on bikes and rode into the Financial District to gather clothes and valuables [...]Read More »

It is hard to believe that it has already been six weeks since we convened Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place 2012. The conference inspired a multitude of ideas, forged new partnerships, and reinforced existing ones. The tone was mostly upbeat; however, owing to the frustration of those who have been calling for change for years [...]Read More »

The new transportation bill, Moving Ahead with Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), became law in the US on July 6th. Since then, MAP-21 has spawned a series of mini-riots in cyberspace. Every group of professionals and advocates seems to be able to find their reasons to gather up and start lobbing rocks at the [...]Read More »

The Township of West Windsor in Mercer County, New Jersey is home to one of the busiest train stations in the country, US Route 1, and some seriously forward thinking bicycle and pedestrian development. The Township’s Mayor, Shing-Fu Hsueh, spoke with us about successes in making West Windsor more bicycle and pedestrian friendly, and efforts [...]Read More »

PPS President Fred Kent is featured as the guest on today’s episode of the cdmCyclist, a podcast hosted by Frank Peters in southern California, where we’re looking forward to hosting the Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place conference this September 10-13. Fred not only talks about the important role that walking and bicycling play in successful [...]Read More »